The unspoken truth about spaying and neutering our pets

Updated 10:00 pm, Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Why is it so hard to have a factual conversation about the medical risks of spaying and neutering pets?

The health implications of sterilizing dogs and cats are complex and highly individualized. Pet owners, animal advocates and veterinarians should be able to talk about them openly and honestly.

But we can't. Why not? The societal benefits of mass spay/neuter -- the prevention of unwanted puppies and kittens, and ending the killing of pets in shelters -- are seen as so overwhelming that the slightest suggestion of a medical downside to sterilization is met with an avalanche of hostility.

The backlash can be so severe, for example, that when I've reported research about increased health risks in sterilized dogs or cats, I've been accused of not caring about the lives of shelter pets, or of being hopelessly naive about people's ability to analyze the risks and benefits of medical procedures.

Promoting spay/neuter has evidently become so important that it trumps everything else, including the truth.

Read the advice in dog and cat magazines or the Web sites of animal welfare organizations, and you'll be assured that not only are there no adverse effects of spaying and neutering, but opting for the surgery will make your pets healthier and better behaved.

Conventional wisdom says that altered pets are less likely to soil in the house, to roam and to fight. They won't get testicular, uterine or ovarian cancer or infections, and they'll have a greatly reduced chance of getting mammary cancer. It sounds so great it almost makes you want to rush right out and get spayed or neutered yourself.

Some of those things are true. You can't get cancer or an infection in an organ that you no longer possess, so it's accurate to say that your dog or cat won't get ovarian, uterine or testicular cancer or infections. And there is an increased incidence of mammary cancer in unspayed female dogs and a pretty high rate of uterine infection as well.

But there are also notable health risks associated with having your dogs and cats spayed or neutered.

These include an increased incidence of some cancers, including osteosarcoma, a painful and usually fatal bone cancer, in neutered male dogs.

Neutered males also have a greater chance of getting prostate cancer and transitional cell carcinoma of the bladder.

Spayed females have a greater incidence of urinary incontinence. They may also have a higher risk of bladder infections.

Recent research by Purdue University suggests that female dogs (and, interestingly, female humans) live longer if they keep their ovaries.

And yes, no matter what you've been told, study after study has shown that spayed and neutered dogs and cats weigh more when fed the same amount of calories as intact animals. The surgery won't "make" them fat, but by changing how their metabolism functions, the amount of food they can eat without gaining weight is reduced.

For most dogs and cats that's actually no big deal -- just feed them a little less, exercise them a little more, and they'll be fine. But how do you do that when you're having it beaten into your brain that spaying and neutering does not, cannot, will not make your dog or cat fat or have any other adverse effects?

This is where I have a problem. I'm not opposed to spaying and neutering. Most of my dogs and all of my cats have been sterilized. I believe that for most pets, the health benefits will outweigh the risks.

Furthermore, most people will choose to sterilize their family pets because managing intact dogs and cats is often messy and inconvenient, and our increasingly urbanized and over-scheduled lives only make it more of a hassle.

Most importantly, the benefit to society of preventing unwanted litters of puppies and kittens is huge. Dogs and cats who are never born can't die in a shelter or live homeless on the streets.

But is any of that a valid reason for what I can only call the deliberate spreading of false and misleading information? Does it justify the anger and opposition that meets me and anyone else who openly discusses the medical risks to spaying and neutering?

Yes, I know there are millions of homeless pets in this country. And there are people out there who will seize on any excuse not to alter their pets. They're the ones who often let their animals, particularly cats, have unwanted litters.

I also know that there's someone out there who's going to read this column and say, "Hell, Martha, spaying and neutering will make our dog get cancer. I read it on the Internet!"

But those aren't the majority. Most people are trying to do the best they can for their pets and their families, and they simply need factual information on which to base their health care decisions.

For their sakes, and those of their pets, we have to stop fearing the truth and reacting angrily when we hear it.

If we can't have honest conversations about the health consequences of spaying and neutering, people won't be on the alert for signs their sterilized pet is gaining weight, because they'll have been told that, "spaying and neutering won't make your pet fat."

They won't take precautions to protect their spayed or neutered pets from avoidable risks such as cruciate ligament injuries.

They may not be aware that some risks of spaying and neutering can be decreased by delaying the surgery until a dog or cat is a little older, while others are breed-related, which can affect which breed of dog a person adopts in the first place.

There's one final reason I firmly believe we have to stop shutting down this conversation: Because it erodes trust. If you lie to people, they'll stop believing what you tell them.

Veterinarians, shelter workers, dog trainers and pet sitters -- all have a certain amount of credibility with the pet-owning public. Veterinarians, in fact, have one of the highest levels of trust of any profession. We shouldn't squander that in order to manipulate people into doing what we think they should do -- or because we're afraid some idiot is going to use it as an excuse not to spay or neuter his pets.

Let's face it, the guy who refuses to remove his dog's equipment because he thinks it will make his own shrivel up and fall off is not being moved by facts and a rational decision-making process.

Cheating caring dog and cat owners out of truthful medical information because we're worried about what that guy is going to do not only doesn't make any sense, it simply hurts the pets of good owners.